Fan shows images of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron remake in Unreal Engine 4

Star Wars fan and Reddit user ‘Thanaclara’ and his team showed footage of their own remake of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron in the Unreal Engine 4 in April. it will take another two years to complete.

The footage is a reconstruction of the sixth mission from the original Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, called The Jade Moon, in which the player must use an X-Wing to take out turrets and a shield generator from the Empire. The footage shows that the original audio from Rogue Squadron was used and the remake also features the spaceships from the original, Thanaclara said in an interview with DSO Gaming.

Using the Unreal Engine 4, the development team has been able to add volumetric fog and clouds, among other things. Thanaclara explains that this is of added value for recreating the Battle Above Taloraan mission, for example, because it was possible to make the clouds look good while flying right through them, without the frame rate dropping too much.

The creator’s goal is to recreate the entire single player campaign, where every playable ship, all levels and the bonus missions from the original will be present. The team will also try to make many other Star Wars ships playable and perhaps also ships that are not from the Star Wars canon. Creating completely new levels is also not excluded and the same applies to the introduction of a multiplayer part, but Thanaclara indicates that for the time being, time is mainly spent on completing the campaign.

These types of fan projects often involve legal issues, as the intellectual property is owned by the companies behind the original games. In the interview, Thanaclara indicates that his team is working on a way to release the game to the public without running into copyright issues. In the past, that has often been a problem with remakes of Star Wars games. For example, the maker of a Star Wars: Battlefront III remake in 2016 gave in after objections from lawyers from Lucasfilm; he then indicated that he would continue with the remake, but without the Star Wars touch.

The fan remake of Rogue Squadron has been in development for two years and the creator says it will take another two years before the redesigned version is ready for release. Videos of the game have been released before, and the remake has its own Reddit page.